‘We solved my mother's murder': Mansfield doctor up for parole; son speaks out

Yahoo

15-05-2025

MANSFIELD, Ohio (WJW) – New Year's Eve 1989, Collier Landry, 11, was in his bed at 3:18 a.m. when he said he heard two loud thuds in the house.
'I can hear my father, voice really low, like murmuring, and I'm laying in my bed, and I always sleep with my door open as a kid, and I'm laying in my bed, and I'm just kind of frozen,' he told Fox 8 News.
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'Everything inside me at that moment is telling me, don't look up.'
Collier Landry
'I'm trying to think of, like, what to do. Do I get up? Do I or what do I do? And I'm just trying to think of all the scenarios, like, what could I do? I'm a child. My father, six foot three, what is going on in there? But I decide to stay in my bed and I'm just holding this pose and I and I hear the footsteps walk down the hall and out of my peripheral vision, I can see my father's feet standing in the doorway because I recognize his shoes and everything inside me at that moment is telling me, don't look up,' said Landry.
In the morning his mother was not there.
'I came downstairs, and I confronted my father. He was sitting in our living room on our couch, and he had a towel wrapped around his waist. He had just gotten out of the shower, and I said, 'Where is my mother?' And he didn't say anything at first. And I said again. I said, 'Where is my mother?' And I'll never forget. He just looked up so coldly and just said to me, 'Well, Mommy took a little vacation Collier.''
'Mommy took a little vacation, Collier.'
Collier Landry testimony
'Right then, I knew he had done something to her.'
Landry's father, John Boyle, a prominent osteopathic physician in Mansfield, convinced him not to call police. But Landry had kept telephone numbers for some of his mother's closest friends, and he reasoned they could call police.
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At that point Noreen Boyle was just considered a missing person.
Detective David Messmore took the case believing within a day or two Noreen would return home.
But during his first visit to the Boyle home, he said Collier was adamant that something had happened to his mother and he wanted to share what he knew with Messmore.
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'All the detectives that work for me in the Major Crimes were busy. They had a lot of work to do, there were stabbings and armed robberies and burglaries. And so, I took the case myself just to dispose of. And hopefully I would find out that she was back home the next day. Not that didn't happen. I went to the house and talked to him for a short period of time, and he was very, very upset,' said Messmore.
'His grandmother was Dr. Boyle's mother was there, and she walked around and any time she got away from us, Collier would indicate to me that he was very concerned. And so I came back that evening, I probably seven or 8:00 at night, and I wanted to talk to him again and she said, no, there wasn't a day where I could talk to him,' said Messmore.
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Impressed by Collier's maturity at his young age and his determination to share what he knew, the detective started meeting with Collier at his school.
'He actually was extremely concerned, and said his mother never left without telling him where she was going or he would be with her. And so, Collier is a very convincing 11-and-a-half-year-old. I mean, he was, is very intelligent and it raised a lot of red flags.'
Collier was already aware that his father had an extramarital affair and that his mother had filed for divorce.
'I must have talked to him for, I think like, probably 2 hours and just laid out the entire timeline of what I knew about my parent's marriage, my father's proclivity for violence, his apoplectic temper. My mother and my fear of him, the divorce, the girlfriend, everything I knew,' said Landry.
Authorities searched the Boyle house in Mansfield but found no evidence of foul play there.
But Messmore discovered that Dr. Boyle bought a home near Erie, Pennsylvania, with his girlfriend posing as his wife. The doctor had also rented a jackhammer in Mansfield and purchased concrete mix and indoor-outdoor carpeting in Erie days in advance of his wife's disappearance.
He obtained a search warrant for the Pennsylvania house first focusing on the garage where he found nothing unusual about the cement floor.
'And so I turned as I opened the door into the basement, there was a very loud odor of fresh concrete and paint,' said Messmore.
In the basement were new wooden shelves that had just been built. Underneath them was another piece of the indoor-outdoor carpeting.
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Another detective found a piece of what appeared to be some uncured concrete, so they removed the shelving and underneath the carpeting they found an area where the cement was not yet fully dried and underneath it they found a body buried in a tarp.
'There was a tarp which I knew he had purchased a tarp, and we finally excavated all of that and as they pulled the tarp up there was a body in it and we unrolled it and I looked at the picture and it was definitely Noreen,' said Messmore.
Police in Mansfield went to the Boyle home and placed Dr. Boyle under arrest.
What followed was one of the most publicized trials ever in Ohio.
Cameras were permitted in the courtroom, and a television had been placed in the hallway of the courthouse where an overflow crowd could watch the trial.
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Messmore sat at the prosecutors table through the entire proceeding.
One of the key witnesses against his dad at the trial was Collier.
'No child wants to be in that situation where they're testifying against one parent, no matter how terrible the parent is or what they might think for the murder of another parent,' said Landry.
'I, I don't regret standing up for my mother. I don't regret testifying. I don't regret, I mean, I regret the situation, if that makes sense. But I don't regret doing what I did,' he told Fox 8 News.
A jury convicted Boyle of murder, and he was sentenced to 20 years-to-life in prison.
With his mother dead and his father in prison, Collier said no one in his extended family wanted to raise him.
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By now he had developed a close relationship with Messmore and his family and asked the detective if they would adopt him.
Messmore agreed, but a local judge rejected the request, placing Collier with another family and denying him the opportunity to even visit with the Messmores.
Landry avoided having any relationship with his father. For years he says he received threatening letters from prison with his dad demanding he recant his testimony.
On his 18th birthday he showed up at the Messmore's house.
The detective said Landry told them no one could keep him from visiting them any longer. 'Dave and I have a bond that I will never have with anyone else in my life. He together, we solved my mother's murder. He stood up. He helped me. He helped give me a voice, a voice to the voiceless and helped convict my father of a heinous crime that he could have gotten away with if it wasn't for him,' said Landry.
Now 47 years old, the same age as his father was when he was convicted, Landry lives in Los Angeles where he produced a film called 'Murder in Mansfield.'
For that documentary he finally confronted his father, now in the Marion Correctional Institution, but got no answers to what or why he did what he did.
He is the host of a podcast focusing on the investigation and the conviction of his father.
It was during a podcast that his dad finally offered an explanation, not an apology, for what he said happened.
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Dr. Boyle contends it was during a heated argument that Noreen fell hitting her head. He placed a plastic bag over her head and kept her nearby until the next day when he drove her body to the house near Erie and buried her there.
Detectives, however, say there was a mountain of evidence to show that the crime was planned days, if not weeks, in advance to kill and bury his wife, so Dr. Boyle could move into his new home with his pregnant girlfriend.
Boyle was denied parole in 2010 and again in 2020.
But later this year he will once again be eligible for parole.
Landry, who for years has called his father a monster, says he has mixed emotions.
'How do you let someone who has been incarcerated for 35 years out on the street when the entire world has changed and is that even compassionate? What is he going to get a job? He can't be a doctor again, you know. He is 82 years old. And so those are a lot of factors that come in, the compassion of release in my mind. And also, is he even ready to rejoin society? Because I don't know if he has come to grips with the crime that he committed, more than willing to admit his part in it fully as he probably should,' said Landry.
Messmore is more direct in what he believes, saying he is willing to write to or speak with members of the parole board.
'He could stay there until he is expired, until his life has ended; he has no business getting out,' said Messmore.
'He has no business getting out.'
Detective David Messmore, Mansfield Police Department (ret.)
In the meantime, Messmore and Landry continue to have a close relationship. Landry visits the Messmore family when he is in Mansfield.
He likes to re-direct attention on his story to his mother.
'Victims get lost in all of this. We really focus on the killer, and what they have done; we never think about the beautiful woman that my mother was and the kind and caring and generous person she was,' said Landry.
He wants to use his voice and his platform to be a positive influence for others who have experienced tragedy.
'The most important thing I like your viewers to take away from is and this might sound strange, but I am grateful that and I hope that I can show by leading a good life that you don't have to let these things define who you are.'
Check out his podcast here.
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